


Prey and Prayer

by Starfeathers



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Church Sex, Dimilix based pain, Felix is trans, Grinding, Introspection, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pining, Unreliable Narrator, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:22:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21915946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starfeathers/pseuds/Starfeathers
Summary: Felix can feel Dimitri's breath against his skin, can take in the scent of him, the taste of him. He’s rain and stone and blood and rot, but he’s sweetness and summer and sanctuary too.-Or, Felix spends his nights ridding the beast of his ghosts.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 10
Kudos: 130
Collections: 2019 Dimilix Holiday Exchange





	Prey and Prayer

They meet at the same time and place each night. Like a ceremony, a ritual, an animalistic habit neither want to shake.

Felix wouldn’t say that he looks forward to it, no—he hates it. More than anything. Hates how much it excites him, hates how his heart begins to pound, hates how the beast’s eye can gaze at him with a kind, haunted gentility that rubs him rough, raw and right.

Like that look of his is enough to settle all the wrongs he’s ever felt.

Moonlight drifts in through the crumbled roof and paints the cathedral a cold blue. The scent of evening’s spring rain still clings to the stone, slick and timeworn, and the damp of the night makes Felix shiver. As he always does, Dimitri stalks his hallowed hunting grounds, haunches raised and a growl in his throat as he slaves ever sleepless to the sickness in his head. And as he always does, Felix watches from the shadows, a silent sentinel to his mindless privity.

Though Dimitri can hold himself together to lead the war, can convince the others that the blood-soaked monster who’d led them this far is finally allowing himself a moment’s reprieve to sleep, Felix knows better. Knows how loud the voices of the damned still ring unending in his head, contrived of whatever impossible standard he holds for himself.

Felix has watched him long enough to be able to tell the difference by now. The Dimitri of the day isn’t the same as the Dimitri of the night, no better than an animal skulking in its cage gone mad in its capacity. At least to Felix, it’s easier to accept him like this. As two different things, as two different creatures; he can admire one while abhorring the other.

It’s weak, it’s useless, it’s hypocritical. To separate Dimitri into pieces is no better than lying to himself, no better than rejecting his old friend even after all he’s been through. 

Though his faces mix more and more lately, Felix can’t shake the picture of the Dimitri he once knew - the one so gentle and warm from his childhood, the one that held his hand and made promises of the future - mauled and bleeding from the beast, crying out for help, the life and love crushed out from beneath the biting weight of his phantoms.

And that beast is the one he sees now, dragging its armored boots against the cracked stonework. Its relic’s blade scraping behind it, war-scoured and forgotten in its trance.

Felix digs his nails into his palms and pulls the half cloak around himself tighter. The boar’s more than enough to take the heat from him. But this is about keeping watch so the animal doesn’t kill itself before the war is over, not his comfort. That’s all there is to these meetings.

It’s certainly not for Felix to soothe the ache in his chest; for that old warmth to stir up. 

He takes a shuddering breath to steady himself, and Dimitri’s wandering gaze snaps to him. For a moment, there’s no familiarity for Felix. The beast’s blue eye is ice, hard and piercing, and the lance glows to life as he falls into a low stance. Crouched and defensive, ready to pounce. 

As much as he wants to, Felix doesn’t drop his gaze. He steps into the light.

“Put that away.” He growls, and maybe Felix is just as sick as Dimitri. For as much as he fears him, loathes him, resents him, the instinct to reach for his blade is only a passing twitch.

Dimitri, the boar, his best friend, his greatest misery. They all stand before him in the silence of the church. Light cuts across Dimitri’s face just well enough for Felix to see the gaunt lines of him, exhausted in his stupor, eyepatch hidden in shadow. The beast’s stare stays focused until sense bleeds back into him, slow and cautious, wary and watchful, before he rises to full height. 

These moments of seeming lucidity make Felix’s skin crawl.

“You’ve come.” His words are white mist in the cold, and Felix watches them swirl up and fade away. If only for an excuse to turn his eyes from him.

“I’ve been here for a while now.” _Far too long._ "You’d better sharpen those reflexes of yours. I could’ve killed you in an instant if I wanted to.”

Dimitri doesn’t say anything for a quiet moment. Felix expects there to be some reproach, some ghastly thing to pass his lips. Instead they twitch up in a smile. Felix can’t stand to look at it. “Ever obstinate, Felix. I suppose I should consider myself lucky. ”

Felix scoffs, a soft noise in his throat that fills the space better than any words could. Dimitri doesn’t continue on his own, and Felix looks to the glowing bones of Areadbhar fade out. “And why is that?”

Dimitri’s pushes the mess of hair from his face, drying straight and limp from earlier’s rainfall. “Because you are with me. Had there been an enemy, I can rest easy knowing you’d have slain them in my stead.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere.” _Boar_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back. “You have to be vigilant, if you let yourself slip you’ll -” Dimitri starts to chuckle then, a warm and earnest sound, so unlike the stilted cackling of his late-night council with the dead. It takes him so off guard that Felix silences himself, watches with wide eyes, and that warmth stirs up like betrayal in his chest. His glowers up and hisses - “ _What!?_ ” - and suppresses the feeling like how the monster suppresses his game. 

“Oh, it’s nothing, Felix.” His laughter ebbs away, but his grin does not. Dimitri approaches then, his armored steps clinking forward with purpose, intent, and Felix feels cotton in his throat; prey to an animal far bigger, far hungrier than himself. “It’s been many years since you’ve fretted over me.”

Dimitri stands before him, so close that he could reach forward to touch him, hold him, _kill_ him - but he doesn’t have to, because Dimitri’s cool, gauntletted fingers move to brush across Felix’s cheek. The beast, too, smells of spring rain and stone, but also of blood and rot and the sodden furs draped over his shoulders. A fitting crown for a dead King.

“Don’t think I’m here out of pity.”

Those fingers trace the shell of his ear and the line of his jaw, ghosting lower to his neck. Felix tilts his head to accommodate. Even now, he’ll give the beast everything he could want of him. Without a word, without a fight. Dimitri hums, appreciative and gentle, and slips his fingers down his collar to press the lines of his throat.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Felix.” He murmurs, and that kind, haunted gentility is there, just as it always is. Felix won’t look at it too closely, not tonight, and maybe not tomorrow either. 

That face has already been burned in his memory alongside all the others.

“I suppose you’ve come to help me sleep?”

A silence, a skipped heartbeat. “I have.” 

Dimitri doesn’t take his eyes away from him even as he steps back, his motions eased and choreographed. As if soothing a wounded dog. Felix doesn’t miss the irony, but he holds in the snarl, holds in the condemnation. This isn’t about Felix, this is about Dimitri. As it’s always been, and as it will always be. 

Ever his shield, as wavering and twisted up as he is. A Fraldarius beholden only to the Blaiddyd before him.

He hears the gentle clink of rustling armor, of leather slipping free. Disrobing already, _how typical_ , but Felix falls in line undoing his clasps. Dimitri comes close again, now bare hand moving to rest atop Felix’s pauldron in soft disapproval. “It’s cold tonight, we can’t have you getting sick.”

Dimitri’s still dressed in his chest armor and cloak, heavy matted pelts glistening in the spectral moonlight. If he didn’t know better, and if he were only a little less sane, Felix could mistake him as a ghost himself. An illusion of the real Dimitri, bright and wretched in the rubble, looking at Felix like he meant the world.

He shrugs him off. “Worry about yourself. I won’t have you tearing my clothes again.”

Dimitri bows his head, apologetic, shy. Like this is the thing he’ll rectify in his endless line of atrocities.

Felix pulls off the leather and drops it aside. He undoes his overcoat, his shirt, his sweater, keenly aware of how the other closes the distance slowly and surely as the last of his garments are shed.

The air is nipping, body bare in offering save fresh bandages hugging his chest. Scars riddle his pale skin - a map of their shared history - and Dimitri runs his hands along each one he can reach. He follows the line of an old lance-wound from the rebellion all those years ago, trailing from shoulder to hip. Branded in service of his Prince. 

He arches to its sensitivity, wonders somewhere small in the back of his mind if the beast remembers.

Glancing up, Felix catches the reverence in Dimitri’s eye, the faint smile on his chill-tinted lips. He frowns. “Are you too cold for this…?”

The beast only shakes his head and kisses the tender crook of Felix’s neck, lips to pulse, teeth to skin. They scrape against him like a promise, like a threat, but Felix leans in as if it’s the only comfort he’s ever felt.

“You’re all the warmth I need, Felix.” He breathes, and his voice is so small, so delicate, so _Dimitri_ that it makes the cold feel like nothing. “You already give me far, far more than I deserve.”

He’s compelled to argue, to knock away those futile hesitancies like so many times before. _They’re a chain around your ankle, a meaningless distraction, how can we fight for what you believe if you can’t believe in yourself?_

Instead, he gives a short and shuddered growl. “Then get on with it…”

Dimitri's fingers slide like winter along Felix’s sides, his hips. His hands are gentle but calloused—just enough for Felix to feel it, to know the experience those roughened hands have been through. “Always so impatient.”

Felix doesn’t grace him with a response, but Dimitri still chuckles at the hitch of Felix’s breath when he digs his nails in. Almost like a tease, almost like affection. Almost like he’s not just a beast toying with its meal.

He grits his teeth. “I’m not impatient,” Felix murmurs, leering up at Dimitri through long, dark eyelashes. “You’re just slow. We don’t need to speak to get this over with.” 

The beast only hums, a low and rumbling sound, before he tips up Felix’s chin. When they’re like this, pressed together in the night, it’s almost like the love in his expression is for Felix. It isn’t, Felix knows. It can’t be; it’s for someone long dead. But the way Dimitri’s shoulders relax, the way he lets his guard down, the way he tilts his head in silent question... it’s almost like that someone is looking back at him. 

He pulls Dimitri in closer, tugs him down by the back of his neck and crashes their lips together. Felix can’t bring himself to think about it, drowns the dread in Dimitri. Just as he always does, just as he will always do. 

He kisses him hard and rough, all teeth and tongue, and he can feel Dimitri smile against him as he kisses back with equal fervor. 

A flush spreads down his neck like blight to his shoulders. He should be humiliated, he should be disgusted. But he isn’t. Felix’s body is moving to the monster’s, hips following the rhythm of its touch, its heated breaths. 

Already he’s aching for the beast to use him again and again until it’s worn itself to dust. 

Dimitri’s hands follow the curve of Felix’s spine down to the small of his back, thumb rubbing in slow circles. A sharp contrast to the bitter acrimony of their usual coupling; so much harder for Felix to keep the embers of his affections snuffed by reality, so much harder to pretend he doesn’t care. 

So much harder to assure himself that this isn’t more than an animal taking its share. Usually it’s carnal, it’s unthinking. Felix can lose himself to their nightly indecence this way, can do what little he can to soothe the beast to sleep.

But this...

Dimitri breaks away, that smile still quirked on his face, a rosiness to his cheeks reminding him of days long past, carefree memories come back to haunt him. The ache stirs up again, warm and sweet like Faerghus summer, snow still speckling in the mountain tops. “You’re blushing, Felix.”

Felix blinks. Opening his mouth to retort, Dimitri’s hands came to grab at his rear and lift him. Felix’s gives an indignant shout, grappling for purchase in Dimitri’s cape and legs kicking out beneath him. Dimitri held him smoothly, steadily, just as he’d been able to do since they were children. A feather in the tides of his crest-strength. “Let me down…!”

Dimitri beams as vibrant as the sun; Felix’s growl fades to a simmer, and he looks away as if Dimitri could burn him. 

“I’m still sore from the last battle, forgive me for not wishing to bend down so far.” It’s a playful tone, and Felix’s cheeks darken. “Does this not suit you?”

Felix frowns, angry and acquiescent. “Like I care.” 

He wraps his legs around his hips. The sharp of his armor presses like prayer into his skin, and Felix focuses on it, relishes in its familiarity. He can handle pain, seeks it on these nights to soothe his King, their bodies an escape from the crumbling world around them. An escape, too, from the endless longing.

Shifting him in his arms, Dimitri carries him forward, back into the shadow. The pillar’s cold, rough stone makes Felix gasp, and he squirms and arches. Still, Dimitri holds him firm but careful.

Felix can’t stand the delicacy, treating him like some fragile thing that’ll break. Mindful so suddenly as if the fracture in the wall behind them wasn’t by his boorish behavior only weeks before. 

Felix isn’t frail, he won't shatter for Dimitri any more than he already has. And yet he craves this rare tenderness like nothing else. When Dimitri lays his lips across his, they’re gentle and curious; light. Nothing at all like when Felix leads. He can feel the crack of his lower lip brush against his; textured, soft, pliant. Inviting.

Felix closes his eyes and lets himself take it, melts in the radiance if him, indulges in a moment of weakness. He leans his weight back as Dimitri leans forward. His hands are sturdy, fingers splayed out to keep him steady. Felix is too small up here, too vulnerable pressed between the sun and the stone. Nowhere to go, nowhere he’d _want_ to go.

So quickly can the beast wrest the reason from him.

Felix grips hard into the furs, rocks his hips forward to close out his traitorous thoughts. Dimitri is cast-iron and strong, a wall supporting him as he’s been supporting his Kingdom, as fallible as they both may be. He can feel his breath against his skin, can take in the scent of him, the _taste_ of him so much stronger. He’s rain and stone and blood and rot, but he’s sweetness and summer and sanctuary too.

Dimitri presses his hips forward, and they both sigh a sound between relief and relish. With nothing in the way, Felix can feel the hard heat of him, and he struggles for more of it, tightens his vice around Dimitri’s hips as Dimitri’s fingers tighten to tug him forward. 

“You’re amazing, Felix…” Dimitri murmurs, and Felix shouldn’t enjoy the praise. Shouldn’t enjoy the way teeth drag and nip at his neck, his collarbone, leaving fresh bruises and marks over yesterday’s. He rubs his cock up against Felix’s with the steady, shallow rut of his hips, spreading Felix’s treacherous wetness along the length of him. He breathes sharp through his nose, pulse thrumming loud as a war drum in his ears, and Dimitri’s teasing is almost enough to make him dizzy. “Does it feel good?”

Felix clamps his eyes shut and turns his head away. It’s fruitless. He can _feel_ the way Dimitri’s looking at him, that inquisitive smile on his face, his lips damp and kiss-swollen. 

Felix nods, only once, and Dimitri lights up. “Just- just do it already…” 

“Again with the impatience.” He chides in hushed tones, but the sincerity in his voice remains as kindly - as lovingly - as before. “But I suppose if it can’t be helped.”

He shifts Felix in his hold, lifting him higher and tilting his hips, aligning his cock to Felix’s warmth. It’s so effortless, so easy, and Felix doesn’t resist. He gives a keen and rocks up to him, tries to take him in, muscles clenching overeager around nothing. 

They’re in a familiar cadence now; Felix knows how to deal with this. He bites his inner cheek as Dimitri sighs, relieved and wanting, rolling his cock into Felix in one smooth motion.

He’s been adapted to the size by now, but he still hisses, tightens around him with a gasping breath. Dimitri hushes and soothes him, runs the pad of a thumb in strokes against his feverish skin. 

“Too painful…?”

Felix grunts, shifts in Dimitri’s hands to spread his legs wider. He buries his face in the alcove of his neck, shivering in the heat of it, willing his walls to relax to him. The damp and skin-warmed pelt tickles his cheek and the collar of Dimitri’s armor presses into his chin, but it’s safe here. He can hide from his worried eye. 

“It’s not… Keep going.” He manages, voice gnarling in higher pitches. 

A breathless laugh, and Dimitri draws back. Felix huffs in relief, in need, in everything so maddeningly in-between. He pivots his hips forward once more and Felix’s body yields to him, accepts him, accepts _Dimitri_ as he scrabbles against the armor plates for purchase, toes curling and fingers grasping in the fur. 

“Alright, then...” 

He rolls back and snaps forward, and Felix whimpers, driven from his throat before he could stifle it. And the sound impels Dimitri to start a pace.

His cock reaches deep and fills Felix to the point of bursting, blanks his mind until he’s gasping, shaking, moans and shouts and the slap of skin on skin resiling against the holy walls. Felix leans up to catch Dimitri’s lips in wet desperation, unfettered by inhibition and sense. 

Quivering thighs held tight in his grip, Dimitri breathes out as Felix breathes in. He pulls to meet him for every powerful thrust, and Felix’s world narrows to his King and his King alone. 

“H-harder...!” Felix trills, lost to the sensations and each other. Time means nothing as Dimitri takes his pleasure, obliging him in earnest, and Felix is limp and senseless as he fucks into him unrelenting. Their lips and tongues meld together, a strangled and needy whine caught in Felix’s throat.

__

Too soon, never enough, he reaches his precarious peak with a sharp and shaking cry, every ounce of him reduced to trembling fatigue in his King’s hands. Dimitri keeps going as Felix clenches down around him - as much of a vice as his legs around his hips - and he can’t hold in the whimpered pleas for _more, more, more_.

__

“Are you sure...?” Dimitri pants, and Felix shakes his head. He isn’t sure, doesn’t know if he can take more than he’s already been given, but he kisses him again instead of thinking. Felix leads it hungrily, biting at his lips and pulling his hair, and Dimitri’s pace never falters. Felix wants to tame the beast, no, wants to tame _himself_ and these horrible-wonderful-impossible feelings struggling to catch flame and burst free. 

__

Dimitri pushes one last time deep inside. With a broken sob, Felix’s body takes him to his limits as Dimitri finally stills with a low and murmured moan, breathing his name like an incantation.

__

“Oh, Felix…” He says, laying kisses to his temple, voice a steady, breathy purr. “How I cherish you...” Brushing his lips against the bites and bruises, Felix thinks they sting nicely, and he breathes the words in between them. 

__

“Mmm…”

__

A satisfied sound in response. Dimitri nuzzles against his cheek and eases out with great care, and Felix wrinkles his nose at the leaking warmth dribbling out along with him. Messy, but he can’t care, not now. He sags against Dimitri boneless and reeling and unwound. In the afterglow they catch their breaths, and still Felix doesn’t feel the cold. 

__

Only the warmth of Dimitri, ineffable in its grandeur. As it’s always been, and as it will always be.

__

His fingers quiver to push back on Dimitri’s shoulders, drawing back, struggling for composure. His King looks up smiling soft and demure, and the warmth in Felix’s chest kicks up into a roaring flame.

__

“If you cherish me…” Felix starts, low and deliberate, tasting the words on his tongue. “Then get through this war. You’ve come too far to let these sleepless nights consume you.” 

__

Dimitri gives a weak and somber nod, and Felix doesn’t give him time to speak. “Don’t make me give my life for you, Dimitri. I want to see this through to the end.”

__

His name felt like honey on Felix’s lips, sticky, overwhelming in its sweetness. He says it so little that even breathing it aloud feels wrong, taboo; right now, he wants to say it again and again until it doesn’t.

__

Dimitri watches on, attentively and acceptingly, his eye shining with undeniable affection. Felix furrows his brow and looks away from him, to the moonlit puddles and shimmering wet stone, anywhere but the blinding sun before him. He swallows, heart raw and open, body spread and bare. 

__

“You’ve shouldered the weight with me this long, Felix. We will see this war come to an end. Together, I promise you.” 

__

And Felix knows who’s holding him here is not the boar, not a mockery. With as much clarity as the sky, with as much clarity as this world could allow, he finally knows it. Felix is impossibly light when he smiles down at Dimitri. Small but true, at least for tonight.

__

“Then let me down and get some rest.”

__

**Author's Note:**

> For the Dimilix Exchange!! Thank you for reading /w\ Fraldarddyhsgdhsg owns my ass as much as Dimitri owns Felix's.
> 
> I’m [Aisikae](https://www.twitter.com/aisikae) on Twitter!!


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